Waves
by bissextile
Summary: After finding Luke Skywalker, the Force allows Rey to feel Kylo Ren's punishment for failing to capture her.
1. Chapter 1

Rey wrings water out of her hair as she turns towards the heat of the campfire. A relief to be around water and fire, trees and birdsong. It makes her feel grounded in a way that flying never will, though when she's sitting in the pilot's set, eyes on the engine, her brain lights up in a way that it rarely does. Luke Skywalker's in the small, wooden hut twenty paces east of the campfire. He said that he needed to think, and suggested that she begin her training tomorrow. He never expected to train another Jedi, he said with an agonized expression. His last attempt was an unmitigated disaster and he didn't know what to do. He was too tired of his failures as a teacher, a brother, a friend. Rey knew that he meant Han's death, that he felt guilt at his inability to do anything about Kylo Ren. Rey and Luke haven't talked much; Luke hasn't seen another person for so long that Rey thinks he must be unused to speaking a language that's not private. Rey knows all too well the strangeness of having to make herself clear to another person, how ineffective words are in the face of grief, insurmountable trauma of losing someone who was a father, husband, friend. When legends turn to flesh, you're either disappointed that the reality doesn't live up to the ideal or wracked with pain after losing the warmth of a real person.

Rey shakes her head. She mustn't get lost in these thoughts. She nibbles at the flesh remaining on a rabbit bone and tosses it into the fire. BB-8 and Chewie are camping out by Luke's hut, and occasionally she'll hear a beep or growl, evened out by Luke's quiet tone. Rey begins her nighttime stretches-she's developed a habit, now that she has enough to eat and doesn't have to worry about losing caloric energy. She starts with her leg tendons and ends with her core muscles. Wiping off the cool sweat on her forehead, she lies on her back, face turned from the fire to avoid the smoke and ash, and closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out. Smooths the plane of her consciousness, until there is an unspeakable vastness, innumerable pinpricks of light without a center. She reaches out to the light, and feels the thirty fourth blade of grass to her left. The highest log on Luke Skywalker's cabin. The closest bird on a tree. The worm it digested an hour ago. The volcanic rock by the sea, face creased by erosion. The lapping of the waves, almost violent, but steady, the ebb and flow not at all out of control like...

Rey feels the ghost of a lash on her back, and a surge of inexplicable anger. Then comes another lash. She can feel the force behind it, but not the pain. The angle of the lash is meant to cause the greatest pain possible, to draw blood. Another lash, then she stops counting as the torrent of rage, confusion, regret, and something buried beneath that she could almost call grief, if she were to put a name to it. It feels nothing like her grief, so she's not sure if she should call it grief, but maybe there are two feelings for the same word. Maybe there are different ways to feel the same thing. Rey doesn't know what to do; she feels wrong, just lying on her back and feeling the lashes that Kylo Ren is getting for his failure to capture her.

She reaches out to the waves, the steady ebb and flow, the water that she's dreamed of all her life, the loneliness that he, inexplicably, understands and drew from her. As if he felt it too, and was lonely in a different way, though Rey couldn't imagine how, with Han Solo and Leia Organa as parents, and Luke Skywalker his uncle. There must be so many stories, so many ways to understand his history, place himself in the world, and yet he rejected them all. Still, no one should have to bear this pain, not like this. Rey's surprised to find that she's no longer angry at Kylo Ren, as if she couldn't be angry with all these pinpricks of light surrounding her, her consciousness alert and steady. She draws from the waves and sends them to him, an offering, a balm against the wounds. She doesn't know if this would work-it might just be a vague feeling, a dream, but if she's feeling what he's feeling so strongly, maybe he'll feel the dream she sends to him.

The lashes stop. Rey feels the undulation of the waves, the smooth, impenetrable waters, as if it is her body, and hopes that it is his body too, just for a moment.

A foreign coolness washes over her. There is something almost grateful in it.


	2. Chapter 2

The blood oozes from his shakily wrapped wounds-he won't let a medical droid near him. He doesn't know why he feels the need to keep his wounds, but he can't stand the thought of something cool and impersonal touching him, something inhuman like Snoke. Kylo knows that he won't be able to sleep on his back tonight, and gingerly lowers his stomach down to the bed, chin resting on the edge of his pillow. He closes his eyes, brings back the waves she sent to him, imagines himself floating on the water, his arms and legs and back dissolving until there is no difference between him and the water. He is the water. And it doesn't hurt anymore, or he can pretend that it doesn't hurt, just for awhile.

He's usually not one for pretending. He's bad at it. He knows his features reveal too much, always hated the way Luke Skywalker could read his thoughts before he himself was aware of thinking them. Hated that Luke Skywalker saw his feelings of insufficiency, his inability to be as strong as he could be. The raw power inside of him won't listen to him sometimes, and it's easier to tell himself that it doesn't matter that he can't control himself, what matters is that he has power and he's able to use it. It doesn't matter who gets hurt because one life, one flicker of light in the vast universe does not mean a thing. All there is is the power in the Force, the energy that runs through him as if it is more than him, as if he can be more through it, every cell crackling with the interconnectivity of the universe. The water and air and fire and earth in him rippling, until they are indistinguishable, elements synthesized until they are one. It's everything, and he knows that he could never leave any of this behind, the exhilarating rush that runs through him when he feels the power call to him. He knew he couldn't leave it behind when the unbridled rush of power intoxicated his senses the first time, not for anyone, not even... those that claimed to love him. No, not him, but Ben Solo.

He tries not to think about Ben Solo, and it's easier when he's with the Storm-troopers, when he and they know who Kylo Ren is and what he wants to accomplish. He can sense the fear and trepidation rippling off of the Storm-troopers; they know their place, and it helps him know his place. He is the one that has power, and knows the value of it. But when he's by himself, or there's a run-in with General Organa's soldiers, he ends up dreaming about Ben Solo. The man he killed so Kylo Ren could be born. Ben Solo is always facing him, sometimes in a mirror, sometimes with a blue lightsaber, steady and crackling against his tumultuous red flare. Ben never says a thing, just looks at him with anguished eyes, as if he'd known that all this was coming, and it was too late for Ben to do anything about Kylo Ren. The worst dreams are when Ben reaches out to his parents, transparent and fading behind Kylo, and every single time Kylo slices off Ben's arm, grasping for ghosts that Kylo should have left behind long ago.

What is the use of love? People do things in the name of it-conquer cities, planets, star systems. Kylo thinks that he can understand that, reaching out for a greater goal, becoming more than what you are. But he doesn't understand the softness, the hesitance, the vulnerability that he's seen in faces of those that claimed to love. What is love worth if it doesn't make you stronger? Parents covering their children from the fire of Storm-troopers-what is the use of this futile self-sacrifice, when the children will be killed moments later? People tell themselves that they are good when they die for someone they love, but that kind of goodness is worth nothing; it does nothing in the greater scheme of the universe. It is forgotten by history books. Good is just a name, and so is evil. Same with light and dark. His own lightsaber creates light in the darkness, something from nothing...

She's sleeping now. It must be night where she is, though it's afternoon for him. She's dreaming, he can tell from the flicker of feelings that run through him, scattered sensations. The coolness of a stone taken from a river. Rustling of leaves, sun-dappled. She's running now, he can tell from the lightness in her feet and heart. Running towards something or someone she's been wanting to see. Such strange lightness in a heart that runs so deep. He felt the darkness in her, the craving to be more, to wake and be somewhere other than the scorching desert sands, signifying nothing. He knows he could hone her darkness, sharpen it until she could use it. Instead of letting Luke Skywalker drain it from her. It would be like draining her life-force. Kylo knows that she would have better control over her darkness than he does; perhaps he could learn from her, as well.

Bathed in strange warmth under a canopy of leaves, he dozes on his belly, his back and heart aching.


End file.
